* The lesson plan for this activity can be found here http://esllol.org/korean/storybooks-written-by-english-teachers/
At the beginning of this semester, I gave our participants the task of creating their own storybooks. The idea was inspired by Kevin Giddens and Mike Griffin’s amazing Do-nothing Teaching (DNT) course, TEDDY BEARS, BOOKMAKING AND CEOS: TASK BASED LANGUAGE TEACHING AND DNT, and Kevin Stein‘s project Your Voice: short stories by teachers for learners.
As you can see from the results below, a great deal of creativity, love and work has gone into these books. This space is to celebrate this. It is also to show my gratitude for all that they have shared with me this semester.
Happy holidays KIETT participants! May your new year be as creative and inspiring as the four months we’ve spent together so far.
* When viewing the books in Slideshare, click on the expand icon to enlarge the image. For the individual photos, just click on one image to see the series up closer.
And please leave a comment for our teachers! :)
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Black Lotus
by
Lee Jaewoo, Kim Jangsoo, Bae Byoungjin &
Kim Hyeongyeong
A Clever cow
by
Kwon YOungwon, Jang HyeSook & Jin DaeKyu
What happened to danny?
by
Hwang jeongsuk, seo chan sook & beun jeong hee
The present from Antartica
by
Ms. bong, Mr. go & Lindsay Lee
Ugly dogly, take olivia away
by
Shim wooseok, Hwang jinhee & Kang sonyeon
After the thunderstorm
by
Seo Jun Hee, Kim Jin Ah, Kang So Ae, and Kim Hui Suk
Run, Diet, Love
by
Choi Hyeon hee, jun Ah reum, lee Dae sung &
lee mi kyung
on the way to school
by
Park min, im young hoon & Yoon jin ok
Tom’s adventure
by
Kim hyung oh, Baek Eun Sil & lee soon hui
Kiss Fish
by
Cho Seonghee, yoon sukjoon, kwak ji-sun &
moon Young-kyu
soon & candy
by
shin gae young, lee li ra, lee yeon kyoung &
kim mi seon
Throwing Back Tokens 
It’s a fascinating thing that books are still around and not slowly being replaced by e-books. Children will most appreciate the colours and stories much less the bonding with parents or teachers while reading.
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Yes this is a good point. There is something magical about being able to flip through pages. It’s like a negotiation process between the parent and the child: a negotiation of revealing magic.
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how cool is this! haven’t said boo in a while, and i stumbled in here and am glad i did. this is brilliant. look forward to reading more stories here in a bit. must run now – but here’s wishing you a happy new year!
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So sorry for taking so long for saying “boo” back! :) I just found your kind comment. I was revisiting the lesson. May have more stories for you in a short while. Take care!
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Hello Josette!
Wow…these are amazing. Thanks so much for sharing! It is fantastic to see what people (teachers, students, trainees, participants) can come up with when given space, time, and support. I would love to hear more about this process and how you set it up. I’d also be eager to see any feedback that you collected from participants on this.
**Nudge alert: It sounds like it would be a great presentation and/or blog post and/or paper or something. Great great stuff.
Thanks for sharing!
What a great model.
Best wishes for the new year,
mg
Hello to Josette’s Participants,
Congratulations on such great and inspirational work. I think you have a lot to be proud of! I can see the tangible results of your labor here and it is very impressive. Part of me hopes that you will be able to take some of the lessons that you have gained from this experience and transfer it to your own teaching context. I did a similar project as a teacher trainer before and quite few teachers mentioned that the biggest lessons they took away from the experience were about teamwork and creativity. I am certain that you took away a great deal of lessons from this project and I wish you the best in your return to school.
화이팅!
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Thanks so much for the comment and for sharing this post on your blog 12 before the end of 12. That is quite the nudge. :) I’ve been meaning to write about the process on esllol.org, but just haven’t found the time to do that yet. It basically involved them reading a short story (you may recall a story involving Lili and definite and indefinite articles?), discussing the different elements of a short story, and then giving them the space to create. Hmmm…I really need to lay this out. Unfortunately I didn’t gather written feedback. All these are on next semester’s to-do list. Thank you for the nudge though it may not come out as you hoped. ;)
Happy New Year, Happy Teaching and Happy Blogging!
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I’m thoroughly impressed!
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Thank you Tyson! :)
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So much imagination, love and care. Lucky students. I showed them to my kids (7 & 10) and they loved them too- especially the one about goat poo (predictable!)
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When I read that you showed this to your kids, I smiled ear to ear. Thank you so much for letting us know what they liked! We had a lot of fun discussing poo and farts as we prepared for the project. :P
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Amazing effort and creativity! From the clever storylines to the fantastic illustrations – everyone must have worked very hard and it clearly paid off. Students and teachers, pat yourselves on the back for a job well done! ;-) Inspiring stuff indeed.
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Thanks for reading and for the generous comments Chop. They are definitely an imaginative bunch of teachers. :)
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Hard work will always pay off! Knock it out of the park, shiny teachers!!!
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Thanks for your inspiring comment, Mr. Go. I hope you can let the other participants know how much teachers and kids from around the world are enjoying their stories. :)
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Josette,
If I had anything to do with this amazing project, with these stories filled with humor, warmth and a belief in the power of change, then this has certainly been a very good year indeed.
Please tell your students that I couldn’t have done anything more healing tonight, after finally unpacking my last box after moving, than read these lovely stories. A candy eating cow. A boy who farts on frogs. Smooching with fish. Such creativity. I don’t want to praise any one story at the expense of the others, but I have to say that there is something so true and scary in the “Ugly Dogly” book. I think Shim, Hwang and Kang have really caught a truth and wrestled it onto paper. But all of the stories have the show care and attention to detail. All of them will be an inspiration to these teachers’ students.
Thank you for sharing these books with us Josette. And being the kind of teacher to help your students find their voices in such a creative way.
Kevin
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Thank you for this detailed feedback Kevin! Knowing how it affected you means a lot and I’m sure it helps them connect their readers to their stories.
You were such an inspiration through this project. Next semester I plan to use your bubble story, Learning to Call Something from Nothing, as the model I use to introduce the concept of writing a short children’s story. Unfortunately it didn’t appear in this year’s plans. Can’t wait to see the creativity that instigates!
Happy New Year, Happy Teaching, and Happy Blogging Kevin!
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